Keeping the postal service up & running, one stamp at a time. Usually silly, sometimes cranky, occasionally a mix of the two.

I am SO behind on posting postcards I’ve received. I grabbed a big handful to scan, and the main theme for most of them seems to be “unwanted cards.” We’ll soon get to what that’s all about, but I want to be sure to start with two cards I really do like! Both of them found their way to me in Postcrossing Forum tags.

I just love this sketch of a Hong Kong storefront & apartments; it really takes me there! The sender asks, “have you tried egg tart before? It has to be my favorite Hong Kong snacks. California has always been somewhere I desperately want to visit, and hopefully I can visit there soon!”

That breathtaking mountain view came to me from Shaanxi, China, and the sender tells me it is called Hua Mountain, and “it’s a little dangerous to climb, but because of the wonderful scenery, lots of people still trying and enjoy it.”

Next up, the kitty classroom, comes to me from Belarus, thanks to a Postcrossing Forum “favorites” tag. I’m so forgetful, I didn’t even remember having marked it as a favorite. Good thing to check those once in a while!

Another cat, this one riding a tortoise, and it comes to me from France as a regular Postcrossing card. The sender’s writing is quite difficult to decipher, which is a lesson to me, even though I THINK my printing is neat, that I could stand to try harder. I thought she wrote that she is in the “Louie Valley,” but a consult with Ask Jeeves (or whomever it is running the internet these days) let me know she probably meant Loire Valley. Also, if I’m reading this correctly, she hopes to open a bed & breakfast next summer. Or it could be that she just got back from a waterslide with Santa–I just don’t know. Well, I do know I prefer the latter.

These next 3 cards all came my way via swap-bot. The big building is the Fine Arts Gallery in San Diego, California–but the card was sent to me from a swapper in the state of Georgia.

I think the Santorini, Greece, card actually came to me from that locale. The sender wrote:

“You can walk to the top. To get to the volcano you can get a small local boat to take you straight there. Otherwise you can take a tour that includes Thirasía. When you get to the top, the view of Santorini is incredible! This is must place to visit if you here. You can jump into the warm springs if you want.”

The last card of that trio is the boat on the river. The card was sent by a swapper in Illinois. She sent it in a “recycled postcard” trade, but if she did indeed but a new backing on a card she previously received, I sure couldn’t tell–and I picked away at 3 of the 4 corners! When I do these, I always like to leave the original stamps exposed (but on the bottom left of the new backing), as a bonus for the new recipient. Anyhow, this card’s sender says the scene pictured is the Mississippi River, a sight she’s never seen in person, but that she imagines herself taking “an old time paddle wheel river boat ride down this river, if they still exist.” They do. No, I’ve not been on the Mississippi, but more than once, I HAVE ridden a riverboat on the Rivers of America.

There’s a tag on Postcrossing Forum called “The Card You Want to Get Rid of,” and if I’d had this next card, I’d have sent it off in this trade, too! I might just send it out in the next “recycled postcard” trade in which I participate. The sender is in Tampere, Finland, and she told me, “I find this tag superb; it’s hard to find a suitable recipient to every postcard, but every postcard deserves to travel.”

Another postcard I’d be happy to get rid of is the “Been there, done that, got the t-shirt” card–that comes from Sheffield, England, in a swap-bot trade. The sender wrote the card on July 11, telling me: “right now it is nearly 10 a.m. and it’s raining, and probably won’t stop for the rest of the day. Typical UK!”

Still more cards getting no love: the trio below were sent to me together from Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada, in a swap-bot “I Don’t Want These Postcards” exchange. I’ll have to post them in my page of cars available for trades! That one that looks like a b&w “magic eye” game will probably have to go out in another round of these “I don’t want it” tags!

This next card came my way from Graz, Austria, in the “recycled postcard” tag I’ve been mentioning, and I may just have scanned & posted the other side here before, but I didn’t mark it as such, so either way–here we go. In this tag, a person is supposed to slap a new backing on a postcard they received from someone else, & then send it to their assigned partner. Let this serve as a warning that all glue sticks are not created equal; there was no postcard attached to this backing. When you flip it over, all you see is shiny streaks. In any case, I thought you might enjoy reading the hand-written recipe.

Well, it’s just about stamp time, so let me ask you now: what are your favorite cards this time? Which ones would you first choose to send off in a trade of recycled or “I don’t want this” cards? Remember, one good use of a postcard you don’t think anyone else will love, is as a vehicle to send a message to your elected representatives!

Actually, I would love to receive the manuscript card from Finland! The T-shirt card I would only keep if the message is nice… otherwise I would soak the stamp off and throw it away. I don’t understand how something ends up on a postcard sometimes.